It’s been long enough since my last outfit post that I’m sure you could (if you wanted to) tell the difference in my weight from one to the other. This is probably healthier, but for various reasons I am not handling it as well as I could. Most of those reasons are jeans that don’t fit.

I wanted to take advantage of the last few weeks of summer to shoot this dress I got in Prague and these lovely Serengeti sunglasses courtesy of Discount Sunglasses. I don’t wear sunglasses often because dark + poor vision (somehow I’m somewhere in between my prescription and the next, so my eyesight is not all that great even when wearing glasses) don’t mix well, but I totally fall for the cool factor of them and love seeing myself wearing them in pictures. These fit me really well, shout out to their team for finding something that wouldn’t swallow my tiny head, and I’ve always wanted to see myself in tortoise glasses, so that was fun as well. Turns out they’re kind of hard to match to my wardrobe, especially the summer dresses, but I think I managed.

Finally, I miss The Toast forever, and I’m so glad they ran a ‘sponsor someone’s tote’ campaign when they closed last year; as a wannabe lit nerd, I’m real happy to have this piece of merchandise.

1. I’ve got kind of into horoscopes. I used to read them religiously when I bought women’s magazines back in 2004ish, when I was 14ish. Then I stopped. Then a few months ago I read some and I was like, you know what, this is getting me pumped. Nothing gets me pumped anymore! I gotta make a note of this. So I followed a couple websites on my Feedly, and recently talked about it on twitter, and someone gave me a bit more info, and basically I’m totally into it. I still can’t read most of anything, I’m not sure I believe much, I’m not sure I put much weight on it— but what I get out of it is immeasurable and I just don’t get it out of anywhere else. I feel silly even saying it. But when someone says just what you need to hear— even if it’s bad!— and you don’t have a “legitimate” source (yet— shocking news, I have a psych appt on August 8 for the first time in years) telling you these things? It can easily be what gets you from A to B. And so far it’s not led me astray once.

Here’s what I’m reading on a weekly basis: The Numinous, and Chani Nicholas. Usually Chani I find incredibly opaque and Numinous is to the point; this week it was the opposite. And I was just introduced to Amelia Quint, who gave me a little bit of info on my chart and I look forward to reading going forward.

3. The dress and the photos in this Mode and the City post are fighting for my attention. There’s something so wonderfully calm about it all, and her look is, as always, perfect.

4. Media consumption is a part of my life again, with ups and downs. I watched all of Santa Clarita Diet, which was entertaining, if not something I’ll remember much of in five days (or now). Then I started Grace & Frankie even though, not unlike zombies, it is not my thing, and watched a season before I decided I was both feeling it too much and not feeling it enough, and wanted the daughters to feature more heavily.

After that, I got sucked in by iZombie. That is probably the first TV show I’ve watched in many, many years — since I stopped writing fanfic, in fact — that I’ve felt fannish about, that I’ve wanted to expand on, that I’ve felt invested in in a good way and wanted to go on. Like I said above, zombies are not usually my thing, but the mythology here is quite all right, and I love that the plot expands while keeping a tight focus on the main cast, and that the secrets do keep getting out in a timely manner. I ship basically everyone with everyone, and I wish it had a bigger fandom, but at least the show itself is doing well, doing so, so well, and so far doesn’t seem like one I’ll be bitter about for years to come (sup, Vampire Diaries).

I’m looking for something new now and I started Lovesick, but as much as I like Antonia Thomas I just don’t know that I’m feeling it too much. So I may switch to something else. I still got Brooklyn Nine-Nine to catch up on.

4. I read The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli and it was amazing. Just. Goddamn. Books are the best, giddy happy amazing. Loved it to bits. Happy I can now read Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda and there’s even a connection!

Earlier this year — finishing it just as I got to Munich; I’ll expand on my travels at some point, promise! — I also read Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown, and I could not recommend it more, either. I’ve had very good luck with my picks so far this year. They’re both organically diverse, beautiful coming-of-age stories, with fleshed-out sibling and family relationships and oh my god, Mary Carlson. Oh my god. And the way I related to Unrequited’s Molly in regards to Reid? A HUG.

5. Summer is way underway, too underway, please-get-it-away-from-me underway, and it’s getting me all confused about laundry because there’s so little to wash that I feel I should toss in more… but it’s just less fabric, isn’t it, and also: there are only so many summer clothes I can actually wear when the temp is in the high 90sF/30sC, and all I have is a fan that keeps warming up when it’s on too long.

1. It was freezing, and I also changed in and out of the dress in public. You would think a dress like this would be plenty for August; in Estonia, you would be wrong. I’m not sure I would have worn it back in the UK when I received it either: I distinctly recall picking it up from the post office and spending two days at my friend’s house in Taplow doing fuckall while it rained buckets outside. Good times.

2. I put my makeup on AND shaved my legs in the middle of the park.

3. The president of Estonia supposedly lives in this place? The colorful building, I mean. Who knows, really.

omg you guys so I got my new camera and I’ve got NOTHING TO WEAR. *tears hair out* *tears wardrobe out* I am MOST DISPLEASED. It’s easier in winter because I can mix and match things! But see, as soon as it’s hot outside I’m the kind of person who reaches for a dress and calls it even. I even get dresses I can’t wear bras underneath, just to wear fewer clothes. And here we are, having shot the mustard and the denim and the red scallops and the orange pattern, and now what? Now. What? I’m going to London and I’m going to Tallinn (expect a life post explaining this tomorrow, I’m committing to tomorrow) and I got nothing to wear that I can proudly post.

You know when some of your outfit pictures kind of tell a story and you try to arrange them in a way that makes sense but you didn’t intend on them telling a story so you have three different mini shoots, there is no beginning or end and it basically doesn’t work?

Think of that as you scroll down this post.

The color palette is very much inspired by Snow White, and it’s partly for the same collab I mentioned when I posted Marigold and told you that was my closet cosplay version of Belle. It also happens to do a nice job of showing off all of my brand colors, so I’m probably going to start slapping the photos everywhere. There are many, and it wasn’t even what I’d call a successful shoot. It was hot, my sister kept getting distracted, and while I deleted most photos I deleted because they were out of focus, dark, grainy or all three, I also deleted a not-insignificant amount because of questionable faces.

That still left me with thirty-three. Five months and I’ve utterly lost my ability to be concise in my picture-taking. I will get there again, I’m sure, but — do think of that, too, as you scroll down this post.

The sun is up, the sky is blue, and I’m cozying up next to a fan in my room because the heat outside is already unbearable. I was made for kinder climates, and cities with Starbuckses in them. Whiny though it may be, I would like it to always be spring. I want to wear sundresses — the flimsiest of dresses — and not melt in them. Alas.

Continuing on the theme of how I’m a geek and stuff, here’s an outfit I put together based on, initially, the dress reminding me of Pushing Daisies, constantly staring at me every time I went into H&M looking for basic long-sleeve tees and whispering, “the facts were these: you began to want me two months, three weeks, five days, four hours, five minutes and thirty seconds ago.” I was helpless to its honey bee charms and my brain associations.

But then, far from closet cosplaying Chuck Charles, as I may or may not do at some point, I let the dress tell me it wanted retro glasses and maybe some black to balance out the sweetness a la Aria Montgomery, and then I picked up a book for a prop as I went out and suddenly I was a little bit more Belle than Chuck, embodying the disgusting cloying romance of:

Flare jeans: the elusive love of my life. As I understand it, they’re coming back into fashion, but my hometown in Spain remains three years behind the rest of the world, so it’s still incredibly hard to find good pieces. Back in the January sales, however, I was determined to find a pair I loved… and I did. It was twice my budget for jeans, but it was beautiful. It fit perfectly. It looked amazing.

So I checked a few other stores, went home, thought it over, and came back that evening for them so I wouldn’t feel bad about my purchase. In hindsight, this was some A+ decision-making on my part, method included. Go Lix.

(I could do this during sale season because, see, Esprit? Not popular in Spain. The shop? A little ways away from the main chain store cluster. I was concerned, to be sure, but I knew I could risk it. The shop itself however may be gone already, and I am very saddened by this turn of events.)

I wear these jeans on a weekly basis, and they were one of the two pairs I took to Barcelona last month. For my second day there — a long walk around the city, hitting some architectural spots, a museum of modern art and, unbeknownst to me, the Cathedral of Barcelona, as well as a weird art gallery and some bits and pieces from my leisurely photo walk back to the hotel I’ve yet to identify — I paired the flare jeans with a beautiful pair of flats from Yull, thick Pimkie socks that matched my cardigan and helped me pretend I was not breaking in a new pair of flats on a major city walk, a fuzzy cardigan I was sent last year by Blue Vanilla, bless them, and one of my many standardfare long-sleeve cotton t-shirts, this one from Sfera, which, believe it or not, has some real gems if you look hard enough.

(I wouldn’t call anything in my collection of long-sleeve t-shirts a gem; I’m talking about other pieces. But I rely on long-sleeve t-shirts to be comfortable, and I have an identical shirt to this one in a sweet dark blue-green color. Both were on sale, both are comfortable as all get-out, both I wear so often I am wearing this red one again today.)

I’ve wanted a floppy hat since I started watching Pretty Little Liars — all the way back in 2010. Spencer wore a burgundy wool (felt?) hat in an episode and looked hot as burning, and a floppy hat in another episode (the first was a cloche, if I recall), and an obsession was born. Justifying the expense of a hat is hard for me for two reasons: a) I know myself, and I know I’ll rarely wear it no matter how much I like the look, and b) it’s kind of hard to find hats that don’t engulf my entire tiny head, face included. There’s a reason most of the hats I own are custom knits.

But just days before my birthday, there was one available in multiple sizes at Pimkie, and they sent me a voucher because I have a loyalty card, and the rest is history.

Actually, the rest is: if that hat had been in my mind for a long time, this location? Was getting there. Back in September, I visited Barcelona with my best friend, and we ended up hitting Maremagnum for a quick t-shirt shop on our last night there. Maremagnum is a mall situated on one of the long docks parallel to the port by Passeig de Colom. At night, with the streets lit up, the boats moored, the soft summer breeze and the mild resignation that my camera would never capture it well, I just wanted to breathe it all in.

Well, breathe it all in, and come back sometime in daylight to photograph someone in it.

And so it was, predictably, the first place I suggested to Megan when it was time to pick a location for our first outfit shots.

Since I moved home I’ve gone shopping more often than I used to, mainly because I keep running out of clothes to wear while I wait for them to finish drying, and even if I could afford a dryer I wouldn’t have a place to put it. This was one such time. I always look significantly better put together on laundry day, because when I have things to choose from, I always choose the same stuff. And I like that stuff! So on Saturday, while I was waiting for my jeans to dry, I scavenged around my closet for something to wear under my new shiny green coat — a gift from a friend — and go find myself a new pair of jeans, and shoot an interesting outfit while I was at it, since me wearing interesting outfits is such a rare occurrence.

It was cold and rushed and while I was editing the photos, I kept rumbling, “I can’t believe I wore tights for this.” But that’s week 1 of 52 self-portraits complete! (I haven’t picked the One yet. Possibly the one above?) And the coat is awesome, shopping was quite successful, and my jeans were dry when I came back.

It’s possible, however, that I lost the tights and the hairdo around Zara, and walked around in mismatched socks and bare legs in the middle of winter for about an hour. You guys, tights suck. Why do they have to look good?

Is this global warming? Is it just weird out there? Some may know, but I am not one of them.

It’s not like it’s summer hot outside, but it’s warm enough to prance around without a coat on at 5 in the afternoon, and that’s a little weird. I remember this time in late December or very early January a couple of years back when I tried to shoot a knit dress under my coat, and not only did the pictures come out blue (I hadn’t learned about white balance at the time) but I pretty much decided then and there that I wasn’t putting on another dress until April at the earliest. I kept that promise.

It was around that time that I accepted I couldn’t stand tights no matter how good they looked, so it wasn’t all that hard.

I’ve become pretty good at shopping for myself — you would think you’re born with that skill, but it took me many years to figure out how I worked, clothes-wise, and these days I get a ton of use out of everything I buy. Half this outfit was bought on Oxford Street back in September — I’m wearing the gorgeous booties I splurged on as well as half my Primark purchases: sweater, and not pictured: long-sleeve tee, bra, two pairs of socks.

The jeans were the only (kinda) flare, (kinda) thick jeans I could find in town, because all anyone ever sells anymore is skinny jeans that are so thin they’re more like leggings and I bloody hate leggings and if I wanted to wear leggings, I would not wear jeans! Why is this a thing? I had a browse online before going to a few stores and ended up buying the exact same jeans I’d found on the Zara website. Even the store itself has changed and is weirdly disappointing now? But at least the jeans are good.

And so: a post featuring an outfit I wear roughly once a week. Comfy stuff.